


Halfway Round the World (That Won't Stop Me From Loving You)

by misura



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: M/M, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-28
Updated: 2010-08-28
Packaged: 2017-11-01 23:44:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/362609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>If he was lucky, maybe Kris'd get his letter in about a month or so.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Halfway Round the World (That Won't Stop Me From Loving You)

**Author's Note:**

> The title is, of course, taken from a cheerful, cheesy song from the A*Teens. It seemed to fit? (Because this is supposed to be a cheerful, cheesy fic, too.)

The first time they told Adam, he didn't believe it. Because okay, maybe he'd been gone on tour for six months, and maybe he hadn't really stayed in touch as much as he'd intended to - it _happened_.

He'd kind of thought he and Kris didn't have the kind of relationship where they had to call each other every single night, anyway; they'd been practically living together during the Idols-tour and after that, with the whole thing with Katy and all that, Adam'd thought they'd sort of agreed to give each other some space. It was what you did, sometimes, when you were in love.

"Give me his phone number," he told Kris's agent, who'd been totally bullied by Adam's agent into telling Adam anything he wanted to know, but who thus far hadn't told him a single thing he'd wanted to _hear_ , such as Kris having said something along the lines of: _'please tell Adam I still love him'_ or better yet: _'please send me a one-way plane-ticket to LA the moment Adam gets back'_.

Right now, Adam was clinging to the hope that maybe Kris and his agent didn't have the kind of relationship Adam had with _his_ agent, i.e. one where he told her all his deepest, darkest secrets because if he didn't, she'd get him drunk and then make him tell her anyway.

Kris was _adorable_ when drunk. (Well, more adorable than usual, anyway.) Also: touchy-feely to the point of clinginess, so Adam thought perhaps it was just as well his agent didn't seem the type to get her clients drunk, or even slightly tipsy.

"I don't think they've got reception over there." Yet _another_ thing Adam hadn't wanted to hear. "I'm sorry, Mr. Lambert. I do have a postal address, if you'd like to write him a letter. Will that do?"

Adam wanted to yell that no, that wouldn't do at all, because he wanted _Kris_ and he wanted him _now_ , but it (probably) wasn't the woman's fault Kris had lost his mind - although if Adam ever went crazy, he'd totally be blaming his agent for having overworked him.

"That'd be great, yes," he said.

She told him the address. It was a postal box somewhere in LA - not even Kris's address then, just that of the people who'd thought it would be a great idea to send an American Idol to the middle of nowhere to do - well, _something_ , supposedly. If he was lucky, maybe Kris'd get his letter in about a month or so. If he was _extremely_ lucky, Kris might get back just before Adam's next tour.

"Why does my life suck so much?" Adam asked of nobody in particular.

"You're famous," his agent told him. "Deal with it."

 

With nothing better to do, (well, okay, so maybe he could have worked on the new album, done some recording, weeded down the tracklist a little bit more), Adam decided to pay a visit to the people responsible for Kris not being where Adam had left him.

His agent insisted on his taking a few bodyguards, although whether they were going along to protect Adam from other people or to protect other people from Adam was anybody's guess.

"I'd like to get in touch with one of your volunteers, please?" Adam told the receptionist, all nice and polite and not at all clenching his teeth or scowling when he was told to take a seat and wait for someone to come and get him.

They only made him wait for about five minutes, so that was pretty decent. Then they took him to some guy in an office, who looked like his job consisted mostly of sitting behind his desk.

"You wanted to contact one of our volunteers over in - " the guy said, probably pronouncing the name of whatever place Kris was in absolutely flawlessly. Adam didn't even bother trying to repeat it.

"Kris Allen, yes." He wondered if a Certain Someone had called ahead to let them know he was coming. He hadn't given the receptionist any names, although she might have looked at him a bit oddly - either like she knew who he was and hadn't voted for him (which was totally cool) or like she didn't know who he was, but disapproved of leather pants on principle.

"They're doing good work there, you know," the guy said, rising to browse through a file-cabinet. "What did you say the name was again?"

"Kris Allen," Adam repeated. "Kris with a K," he added, just in case the files were arranged alphabetically by first name. "He's a friend." Although unless Kris had a really good explanation for having taken off without so much as a phonecall, Adam might need to re-evaluate their relationship.

"Oh, you mean the guitar guy." Kris's file was rather slim, Adam was displeased to see. Hardly anything there at all. "Well, like I said, he's in -. Originally, they were just going to help out at the local school, maybe dig a well - stuff like that."

Adam nodded, as if that made complete sense. "But?"

"Well, the school-building collapsed, so now they're rebuilding that as well," the guy said.

"The school-building collapsed," Adam repeated slowly.

"It happens sometimes."

"The school-building where Kris was working in collapsed," Adam said, just in case he'd misunderstood or some such thing, like maybe there'd been _two_ school-buildings.

"I said that, didn't I?" The guy frowned at Adam, sounding a little annoyed. One of Adam's bodyguards edged a bit closer, answering the question of who they were there for rather loud and clear.

Adam was going to _kill_ Kris. "One last question," he said.

"Yes?"

 

"Adam, I don't think you've thought about this enough." The bodyguards had been easy enough to get rid of; Adam'd simply claimed he needed to go to the bathroom and voila, problem solved. Although he was probably going to feel the bruises on his elbow he'd gotten while wriggling through the (not meant to be wriggled through) window for a while.

He'd considered dumping his cellphone, but then he'd remember how he'd felt when he'd found out Kris had taken off just like that, without even leaving one lousy voicemail and even if Adam didn't have anyone in his life as important to him as he should have been to Kris, there were still a number of people he'd been meaning to call once he was safely underway.

"By which I mean you haven't thought about this _at all_." His agent had been kind of at the bottom of the list - not because Adam didn't love her, evil and all, but rather because he'd prefered to put at least an ocean between them before letting her know what he was up to.

"I've thought about it!" Mostly about the expression on Kris's face if Adam'd show up, but he'd also thought about the consequences. A little. "It's not like I'm going to _stay_ there," he added, in what he hoped to be a conciliatory tone of voice. "I just need to get it through Kris's thick skull that he has to come back to LA with me."

"He's doing charity work there, you know. You talking him out of it isn't going to look good."

"I'm in love!" Adam protested. "I can't live without him!"

She didn't seem impressed. "You managed well enough during the tour."

"I thought he'd be waiting for me." That sounded kind of selfish. "Or, you know, maybe gone on a tour of his own." That was a little better.

"Yeah, okay, I get it." She sighed. "Listen, honey, if this is what you want to do, then do it."

"Really?" Adam hadn't expected to get off quite so lightly.

"We'll find a way to spin the story somehow," she told him. "Oh, and you're going to have to get married to him when you get back, of course. Terribly heteronormative, I know, but to most people, it's still not true love unless they're hearing wedding bells, so you're just going to have to put up with it."

"I'm not sure if Kris - " Adam started, when he realized she'd hung up on him.

Upon consideration, he supposed he could live with Kris being married to him if that meant he could live with Kris. Being famous meant occasionally making concessions, after all. Surely Kris would understand that as well.

 

The expression on Kris's face when he saw Adam was everything Adam could have hoped for.

" _Adam_?"

Assuming he'd been trying on a Halloween costume or some such thing, anyway, and his goal had been to scare the hell out of Kris. It was a bit of a let-down, really; Adam'd expected a hug at the very least, but maybe Kris just needed a bit of time.

"Kris," he said, and there'd been all these things he'd been meaning to say to Kris, about how Kris was an absolute jerk for making Adam travel halfway across the world just to see him, and about how Kris could have at least called or sent him an e-mail or a postcard or _anything_ , only after six months, Kris was _right here_ again, right where Adam was, so Adam kind of decided to skip all that and move on straight to the part where Kris had apologized and Adam had forgiven him.

"You uh volunteered, too?" Kris asked, looking adorably confused and a little happy, too.

"Can't I have a hug first?" Adam asked, because he sort of got this feeling that maybe there weren't going to be a lot of huge once he answered Kris's question with a negative.

Kris shook his head and smiled and then he was hugging Adam, and it felt just like the good old times, except that - "Have you lost weight?" Adam asked.

"Maybe a little," Kris admitted.

Adam thought it might be more than a little, but now didn't seem the best time to point that out.

"Hey, do you want me to show you the school I've been helping to rebuild?" Kris asked brightly in a rather obvious attempt to change the topic. "It's really cool."

"I'd love to see it," Adam lied.

 

" - oh, I wasn't inside when it happened," was Kris's reaction to Adam's asking about the collapse.

He'd introduced Adam to the other volunteers, five of whom had immediately asked for autographs and two of whom had refused to shake his hand.

"I guess we were all really lucky, huh?" Kris added, smiling a little sheepishly, as if he'd never quite thought about it like that, like maybe it hadn't even occured to him a building that spontaneously collapsed might have been _dangerous_. Adam wanted to scream.

"Yeah, kind of," he said instead. "So the guy back in LA mentioned something about classes?"

Kris beamed. "Music classes. I mean, we don't have a lot of instruments, obviously, but we make do. The kids are all very enthusiastic and, well, it's fun, you know? Sometimes, I think they pick up more English from my music lessons than in English class. That's uh what Joan's teaching, by the way. She's really nice," he added hastily.

"That's great," Adam said. "I know how you feel about music." That seemed a nice and neutral way to gently steer the conversation in the direction Adam wanted it to go.

"Yeah," Kris said, looking a little sad all of a sudden.

"If this is what you want to do then, you know, I'm happy for you," Adam went on, lying through his teeth only so that Kris would stop looking like someone'd just kicked his puppy or something.

"Really," Kris said, tone flat. "You came all this way just to tell me that?"

"If you're going to stay here, because staying here makes you happier than anything else you could be doing with your life, then I will honestly _try_ to be happy for you," Adam amended. "It probably won't work, though. I'll be miserable."

"You'll get a new boyfriend or something," Kris said, too quickly.

Adam looked him straight in the eyes. "Do you really want me to find a new boyfriend who isn't you? Because I could do that, you know - I'm famous, I'm hot, I'm all-around _awesome_ ; it wouldn't be too difficult to find someone who appreciates all that. But I think then _you_ would be miserable."

Kris laughed a little, but not as if he was thinking what Adam had said was at all funny. "Jealous, you mean. You think I'd be jealous if you hooked up with someone." Kris didn't say 'someone _else_ ', Adam noticed. Fair enough; he and Adam had never _officially_ gone beyond being good friends, after all.

"I think you'd be as miserable without me as I'd be without you."

"Not all the time, then," Kris said. "Because you can't tell me that during that tour, you were miserable for all those six months. I know that's not true."

"Not all the time," Adam acknowledged. "Just sometimes."

Kris sighed and looked away, back at the school. It still hadn't been fully rebuilt. "One month," he said.

"You're going to come back in one month?" It wasn't quite what Adam had hoped for, not after he'd pretty much told Kris he _loved_ him, in that big, scary sort of way.

"Actually," Kris said, "I was thinking we could go back together. In one month."

Adam's agent was going to _kill_ him. "Yeah," Adam said. "Okay."

 

[one month later]

"He's got an album," Adam said. "I'm on it, too," he added. "A little bit."

Kris was rolling his eyes at him. He'd never met Adam's agent, clearly - maybe he thought she was just like his own.

"Well, that's perfect. Considering he doesn't have an agent anymore."

"He what?" Adam glared at Kris. "What did you do to your agent?"

"Oh." Kris looked faintly guilty. "I think she sort of quit?"

"Kris thinks she 'sort of quit'," Adam reported faithfully. 

"Imagine my surprise." Adam refrained from pointing out that _she_ hadn't quit upon hearing he'd be spending some time in a place the name of which he still wasn't able to pronounce properly. She _had_ threatened to have him kidnapped, but that wasn't exactly anything new. "So, how's the album? Honestly?"

"Honestly? It's fantastic." It would be, anyway - right now, it wasn't exactly done yet. It wasn't as if there'd been a studio, after all; Kris had made some recordings with a good, old-fashioned casetteplayer, but it'd probably be easier to rerecord the songs than to try and improve their quality.

"And you're on it," she said. "A little."

"And the kids from the school," Adam said.

"And in order to get this album produced, Kris will be looking for a new agent, I suppose."

"Well." Adam could see where this was headed. He could _so_ see where this was headed, and it would be an absolute disaster. "I'm sure we'll be able to figure something out?"

"Let me talk to him," she said.

"Do I have to?"

"You let me talk to him _right now_ and maybe I won't mention the wedding," she said. "Which I'm sure you haven't talked to him about yet, and do you really want your agen to propose for you?"

Adam passed on the phone.

 

They named the school after some Catholic saint Adam had never even heard of after they'd finished rebuilding it, which was about two months after Kris had left. Adam thought that was rather unfair; Kris didn't seem particularly bothered by it.

Adam's agent who was now also Kris's agent got Kris's new album produced in a little under a month, which should have been too quick but somehow wasn't. It sold amazingly well, and it would have made Kris rather rich if he hadn't in advance donated all the proceedings of the album to the school and the village the school was in.

Kris went on a world-tour. Adam went on a tour to Russia and then gave a concert in space, which was kind of weird and not very comfortable, but also sort of cool, so he didn't complain about it to Kris later. Much.

And they all lived happily ever after.


End file.
